Category: Book Notes

The Introduction to Thomas Kidd’s Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots provides a helpful series of questions when considering the life of this great orator and hero of the Revolution. In light of Henry’s Anti-Federalism, how is one to view the ratification of the Constitution? Was Henry’s concern about the Constitution valid, especially in light of its minimal emphasis of state’s rights? Did the Constitution leave an open door for the entrance of tyranny? Since the people had won liberty, how is this liberty going to be preserved in the 21st century? These questions were worth considering in the 18th century, and seem even more important to consider in our own day.

Thomas Kidd summarizes his introduction with these words:

Can we still place Henry in the pantheon of leading Founders if he opposed the Constitution? Can a sincere patriot question the Constitution itself, the document that has ostensibly become the bedrock of national freedom? Whatever we think of his resistance to the “more perfect union” embraced by other patriots, Henry’s opposition to the Constitution was born out of the cause that defined his career, an unshakable commitment to liberty (xiii).

In his Raised with Christ, Warnock offers several autobiographical observations about his own renewed appreciation for the Resurrection. In chapter eight–upon studying the apostles’ preaching in Acts–he discovers various ways in which the Resurrection applied. Then he adds:

But prior to that study I had definitely spent more time thinking about hat Jesus’ death had achieved. While his resurrection was in the back of my mind, I was inclined to simply feel glad that Jesus was no longer dead, rather than giving much thought to how the resurrection might impact me personally (103).

One of the helpful features of this book is the admonition to think of death and resurrection as part of the same coin, and to treat the apostolic use of one as an affirmation of the other.

And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity. -Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

I assume Eco views sleep here in the sense of resting in the divine presence.

Adrian Warnock, in his popular defense of the Resurrection (Raised with Christ), argues that too many “Protestants are so busy protesting what they are against that they forget to declare as loudly what they are in favor of.”

Mortify your intelligence, learn to weep over the wounds of our Lord, throw away your books.–Ubertino, The Name of the Rose

Ubertino’s caution against William’s rationalism goes overboard. Over-reaction is always a possibility when contrasting ideas.

A short dispute arises between Ubertino and William in Umberto Eco’sThe Name of the Rose about how heretics respond to torture. William argues that in torture everything returns to your mind, “as if you are being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell.” “Under torture,” he continues, “you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him.” Under torture, heretics tell the most absurd lies, “because it is no longer himself speaking, but his lust, the devils of his soul.”